A copy of the
paper that Prof. Dean gave has been deposited with University Seminars.The following is a synopsis.

The
writ of the Lord Chamberlain never extended to Ireland, and Ireland never
institutionalised stage censorship.As a result, many have claimed that there has been no stage censorship
in Ireland—indeed many plays were staged in Ireland in open defiance of the
Lord Chamberlain, and Norman St. John-Stevas has argued that, since the Playboy riots in 1907, “Irish theatre has been
considerably Freer than the English.”

However,
throughout the twentieth century the meaning and modes of censorship have
expanded, and the agency or person responsible for it is often polymorphously
anonymous or, alternatively, ubiquitous.Prof. Dean’s paper aims to investigate who in Ireland performed
censorship in the twentieth century.

One
of the most prominent instances of institutional stage censorship in
twentieth-century Ireland emanated from the state, although there was at no
time legislation that allowed for theatre censorship.During the second world war the Department of Justice
delegated censorship responsibilities to theatre managers—they were to ensure
no plays would be staged that compromised Ireland’s neutrality.In 1940 Lennox Robinson’s play Roly
Poly—an adaptation of
Maupassant’s Boule de Suif
updated to the 1940s—was objected to by the German and Vichy delegations.The Gate theatre was told by the
Department of Justice that it had violated the Emergency legislation—the play
was perceived as anti-German.Roly
Poly was withdrawn after
three nights.A second clear
instance of effective institutional censorship occurred in 1959, with church
intervention against the stage version of J.P. Donleavy’s The Ginger Man.The play offered much to offend Irish Catholics, and after three nights
and universally poor reviews, Archbishop McQuaid’s intervention against the
play resulted in its being pulled by the Gaiety’s manager, Louis Ellman.

Beyond
institutional censorship there were many other types.First, authorial self-censorship, of the type practised by
Yeats in his endless revisions of The Countess Cathleen.A second category is collegial censorship, involving a reader, advisor,
publisher, or editor, who is usually sympathetic to the author, it not the
text.An example of this might be
seen in the case of Synge’s The Tinker’s Wedding, which the the Abbey refused to stage, despite the
fact that it held Synge in high regard—the play was thought likely to offend
Catholic sentiment.

A
third type of potential non-institutional censorship occurs thanks to the
nature of the distribution and consumption of the text—its transformation from
play to performance.In this
process theatre owners, actors, directors, patrons and beyond can affect the
staging of the play.The
government’s representative on the board of the Abbey after the announcement of
the subsidy saw his role as acting as the “watchdog of the subsidy,” objecting
in this capacity to language in The Plough and the Stars.The actors also had considerable input in the censorship of O’Casey’s
play, forming, in his words, “a Vigilance Committee.”The play opened to ecstatic reviews in 1926, but was subject
to a fourth level of censorship—censorship by those who consume the work as a
performance.Public objections to
the play were so diverse and diffuse that it has been argued that this
controversy was instrumental in assuring that stage censorship was never
enacted in Ireland.Vocal
opponents of the play were pitted against vocal proponents.

The
propensity to protest or riot became one of the best known traditions of Irish
theatres, and it was well-entrenched in press coverage by the 1950s.The eagerness to identify this
tradition continues unabated today—the New York Times invoking the Playboy and Plough and the Stars disturbances in an articles about the
proposal to relocate the Abbey.

Q. Can we move past simply reporting actors’
objections and reconstructing the reasons for those rejections?

A. One reason is the fact that actors were
invariably the subject of the violence—it was directed almost exclusively at
them.Their rejection was
crucial—it led to the split over In the Shadow of the Gunman.Actors could simply refuse to play a role, particularly before their
professionalisation in 1905.

Q. Actors’ objections have not been brought up
in previous work.

A. No, and it is a controversial issue, as the
actors were so popular.They
probably exercised at least as much censorship as anyone else.

Q. When you speak of authorial/collegial
censorship do you differentiate this from the critical project?

A. No, I don’t.It is difficult to prove whether authors
were coerced, therefore it is difficult to draw a distinction.

A. I am not sure—I would have to look at the
ticket receipts more closely.Receipts actually improved after the Playboy, thanks to Synge’s continuing
popularity.O’Casey was also
enduringly popular.These
controversies did lead to the Abbey becoming famous, notorious, worldwide.They have also been used to advertise
the plays in recent years—in a Dublin revival of The Ginger Man they ran the original newspaper notices.

Q. The last time I was in Dublin the theatres
appeared to be playing almost the same classic repertoire of the early years of
the century.Is there a new type
of nationalist censorship, do you think?

A. Perhaps.Playboy,
just two years after the first run, had become part of the nationalist canon of
plays.I end my book with Martin
McDonagh, who is hugely popular and yet cannot get his Lieutenant of
Inishmaan played—no one
will take it on.

Q. What do you think happened in the case of The
Silver Tassie?Was the Abbey wary after The Plough
and the Stars?

A.I haven’t thought about it.There was animus between O’Casey and the Abbey on other grounds too, and
in fact The Plough and the Stars had more positive than negative effects on the
Abbey’s future.

Q. In connection with the Robinson text: An American agent in Ireland during the
second world war, who has written a book, was there for the purpose of vetting
pro-German sympathies in Ireland.It might be interesting to take a look at this.

A. I would love to get my hands on it.The Robinson text itself is not in
print.There is a wonderful study
by Donald O’Driscoll of censorship in Ireland, 1939-1945.

Q. Do you think there was a competition of
sorts between the protests in the US and in Ireland?

A. Yes.When Playboy came
to Philadelphia and there were riots they were seen as anachronistic—Ireland
had already moved on from that moment.

Q. The G. Nolan S.J. who signed McQuaid’s
letter.Is he the same S.J. who
collaborated on writing the Irish Constitution?That would be an example of the various levels of censorship
blurring on one issue, as it breaks down the Church/State divide.

A. I don’t know whether it is the same person.

Q. Is there much censorship today?Did, say, the film about the Magdalene
Sisters encounter problems?

A. Every culture and time has its own form of
censorship.Of course it is
different now, but there remain all sorts of quirks and anomalies—on the
British stage today female nudity is allowed only if the actress does not move!